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Sunday, 2 January 2011

The sand dunes of Maspalomas in Gran Canaria one of the Canary Islands are a wonder of nature. Lifeless as they seem, the sands shift sculpted by the wind to living expressions of nature, undulating landscapes, curves, arcs and bends that would defeat the construct of any calculus expert.

To walk these sands, you need very good footwear, a pair of good fitting sandals. The ones I wear, I bought from a shop in Berlin over 12 years ago, lots of leather and Velcro grips with hard wearing soles that have been trusty and trusted to handle each climb and descent, round the nature reserve, to the beach or just on the random loiter.

Other footwear

Shoes don’t do it, they get filled with sand making your walk impossible as you take them off every few steps to empty them of sand.

Bare feet in the cool of the day could be good but there are parts with spiky seeds that you do not want to step on, there are times sandals gather so many of those seeds that they become platform shoes of sorts.

Some people walk the dunes in trainers and socks, dumb does not begin to describe the fact that practical trumps fashion sense in this case.

Crocs are a downer

Talking of fashion, the new kinds of footwear sported by some people are called Crocs, whilst they might have ergonomic wearing potential, they are so dastardly ugly, it appears that is their selling point – ugly is the new beauty.

The range of colours have a spectrum of sickly to hallucinatory, if I were shod with those in my coffin, I would sure resurrect for the purpose of taking them off and return to my eternal repose.

Heel and heels deep

When I thought I had seen it all, there came this lady, or was it a man, I could neither tell whether he or she were a female impersonator in drag or a transvestite, it did not matter but walking the dunes in stilettoes was a scandal beyond the topic of sandals, the way she struggled, I was caught between the extremes of empathy and sheer derision.

You almost want to have a spare pair of sandals for the stoned and deranged that wander those sands wrongfully shod and learning no lessons from the fact that they are walking with great difficulty.

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I have many stories to tell, I am English of Nigerian parentage, I lived in the Netherlands for 12 years, returned to the UK recently but still have wander lust - the rest is somewhere online, most likely in on blogs.